


Rough Landings

by Mere_Mortifer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Alien Cultural Differences, Banter, Bisexual Female Character, Blood, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Crossdressing, Dimension Travel, Elements of Urban Fantasy, Escape, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Gift Fic, Humor, Lesbian Character, Magic, Power Imbalance, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rituals, Sci-Fi Technology, Science Fiction, Secret Identity, Setting inspired by The Neverending story, Sharing a Bed, Size Difference, Strangers to Lovers, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-19 00:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29742498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere_Mortifer/pseuds/Mere_Mortifer
Summary: When Maxine finds the coordinates to a pictoresque desert Dimension, she plans on swinging by, take some pictures, and be on her merry way after a few days.She doesn's expect to land in the middle of nowhere, get captured by a bunch of overzelous guards and become the concubine of the famous Seventh Oracle all in a span of a couple of hours.And whoisthis Oracle guy, anyway?Easy! Inc. is not associated to the events here described, has not sponsored the publication of this work, and frankly thinks the whole thing turned out to be really fucking gay.
Relationships: Lonely Queen/Interdimensional Traveller That Crash-lands In Her Dimension, Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 8
Kudos: 5
Collections: Proximity Flash





	Rough Landings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KannaOphelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KannaOphelia/gifts).



> I don't know what posessed me to write something this long in less than a week, but I'm now ready to sleep for the next month. In the meantime, my lovely recip (and whoever happened to click on this), please enjoy!
> 
> Warnings: Threats of violence; sand that gets in your hair and refuses to leave; political crossdressing; blood rituals & other fun activities girls can do on the weekend; bed-sharing but the bed is very big, so what the fuck ever; horses; sexual content; NO horses present in the sexual content; unprounceable fantasy names.
> 
> A big thank you to both [rea_of_sunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rea_of_sunshine/pseuds/rea_of_sunshine) and [sinkauli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkauli/pseuds/sinkauli) for beta-ing the fic!

_Well,_ _this is fucking bullshit._

It’s far from the first time Maxine thinks something along those lines—since she started Dimension-hopping for fun, that is, not just today. Although today has been filled with a particularly explicit inner monologue. 

It started when she landed in cool, fine sand, with nothing around her for miles. 

When she went to check it, the _TravelEasy!_ 2.0 implant in her hip still showed the coordinates she’d put in just minutes before. 

Coordinated to the middle of a fucking desert, turns out. Yeah, cool, exactly what she’d planned. 

The heavy backpack Maxine always brought with her during these travels was half-covered in sand, flat on its face, unmoved after she'd lost her balance and reflexively slung it away. The shift between Dimensions had been smooth enough—she was so used to the nausea from jumping between them, at this point, that she barely notices it anymore—but she’d been expecting to land on solid ground, and the high-heeled boots she was wearing weren’t made to trek through sand. 

She picked up the backpack, swore loudly and creatively at the two moons staring down at her ( _sky’s so fucking pretty here, ugh,_ she thought angrily), and then got to walking. 

There was only one direction that would save her from more endless desert: the vague outline of a castle in the distance—not so far away as she’d initially feared, simply blurred by what Maxine _hoped_ weren’t colorful, toxic fumes. Maybe the fog here was just different than on her Earth. 

Deadly or not, the shades of pink and purple that fell like a thin veil over the high, pointy towers and irregular skyline were cute and aesthetic as all fuck. Maxine would have loved to just teleport there, but—as exemplified in her 10/10 crash-landing—she had no idea of the right coordinates, and eyeballing it could have meant shifting smack into the middle of a wall, a busy street...or another person.

Oh yeah, she’d heard horror stories. She also went out of her way to search real-life pictures to accompany said horror stories on rotten.com, which emotional scarring aside, had served as effective cautionary tales. There was a reason landing spots were built in nearly every city in all Dimensions where interdimensional travelling was a known thing—and since people and other less anthropomorphic creatures had known about it for millenia, that was pretty much everywhere. 

It was very weird that she’d landed in the middle of a desert instead of the landing spot she’d been aiming for...whatever, she must have punched a coordinate wrong and gotten lucky that it wasn’t a fatal mistake. The old Atlas she bought for cheap held the information of a lot of interesting places, and Maxine had picked Dimension 04.294 - Home of the Oracle almost at random. The faded pictures in the book showed the same two moons that hung in the sky above her head, so she _was_ in the right place. 

The luxurious marble that seemed to glow white in the night and the people in the colorful traditional clothing of the _other_ pictures, however, were nowhere in sight.

Oh, well. When in Rome...

She started to walk. She walked and walked, then stopped to take off her boots and socks, and kept walking with her toes sinking in the blueish sand. 

Desperate for a distraction, she studied the landscape around her, losing herself in the alien atmosphere of this world. The night—if night it was—wasn’t cold like she knew desert nights were on Earth. It cooled the sweat beading on her forehead, but it didn’t make her shiver, and more than once, she got the urge to just lie down on the fine sand under her feet and take a nap. 

Everything else about her surroundings raised goosebumps on her arms, though, so Maxine forced herself to stay awake and alert. The color palette of the sky, of the fog low around the castle, of the pale moons, was so dreamlike it felt like it had been stolen from a painting. It wasn’t so dark that Maxine had to struggle to see, but the air itself seemed blue. 

Overall, she liked it. 

Until knights on white horses appeared over a dune, gliding so easily across the sand that she suspected they were floating a few inches above it, and before she knew it, they were surrounding her. Sword-to-the-throat, surrender-and-we’ll-spare-your-life kind of surrounding her, which seemed a bit dramatic, but at least she could pencil something off her bucket list. 

(That’s not when she thought _Well, this is fucking bullshit,_ by the way. That happens a few minutes later, when they pierced the _TravelEasy!_ 2.0 with the tip of a dagger, effectively and figuratively blocking all her exits.)

* * *

Turns out the knights just wanted to take her to the palace.

Ah, joke’s on those fuckers! _That’s where she was going anyway._

Maxine finds this out when she wakes up from the hit on the head one of the knights delivered with the hilt of his sexy, sexy sword. 

She figures she has three, maximum four, other concussions left in her lifetime before the damage is permanent, so when she comes to and finds herself hoisted on the shoulder of one of the Rude Boys With Horses, she pretends she’s still sleeping.

She opens her eyes only a sliver, enough to see an important-looking, ivory-colored floor. She’s facing the other three men that found her, and she can hear them talk in low voices in a language she can’t understand. _Goddamnit_ , she thinks, _they better not have busted the translator…_

She can feel the device still in her ears, but it’s not doing its job: the voice filters through the small buds, but without the instant translation she’s used to. It had cost her a fortune, five years ago when she bought them from a shady seller that claimed to have copied and improved the design of the more popular _TalkEasy!_ version. Maxine had been pissed enough at the monopoly _Easy! Inc._ had on Dimension-hopping that she’d said fuck it, and bought the translator from that weird dude with the wizard-long beard. 

She’d taken great care of it, and it hadn’t failed her yet. In its defense, she’s also never taken a sword hilt to the side of the head. 

The language the men were talking remains unfamiliar, but the tone is relaxed and jokey, which Maxine counts as a blessing—the last thing she needs is to have four pissed guards (soldiers? Who the fuck are these guys?) on her hands. Her diplomacy skills have never been great, and she’s travelled enough to know that _I’m just a tourist!_ sometimes gets you a warm meal and suggestions to visit the local thermal springs, and other times—well. 

Other times it gets you bouncing up and down as a tall, muscular dude holds all your weight—and not in the fun way. _Jesus, this guy sure has a pep in his step…_

The listening-to-idle-chat and the being-carried and the studying-the-floor (which seems to be one long, uninterrupted slate of marble, or this world’s equivalent) goes on for a while. They meet no one along the way, and the most interesting thing Maxine notices is that the guards have taken off the long tunics that hid all their skin back in the desert, because she sometimes gets glimpses of the golden-dark skin of their shins and feet. She also notices the intricate design of the sandals they’re wearing; the glinting of the pale metal shifts from gold to silver to white as they go in and out of her line of sight. 

They look very campy, she must say, so obviously she wants a pair, and she’s not above stealing them from one of the guards should the occasion arise. 

The man carrying her hoists her up higher on his shoulder, one of his arms circling both her thighs, and Maxine barely suppresses a groan at the pressure the move puts on her stomach. Yeah, freeing herself and stealing sandals, any moment now, _aaaa_ ny moment.

Okay, alright, not _this_ moment apparently—in this moment they stop walking, and there’s a sliding of heavy doors behind her and the general atmosphere of people getting into their best postures and smoothing down their flyaway hair, because they’re about to meet someone important. 

The dude shifts her again, just as painfully ( _careful with the stomach!_ ) as before, and Maxine ponders if throwing up down his back just to embarrass him in front of whatever VIP awaits them behind those doors is a good idea. Or it’s just, like, super suicidal. 

The Seventh in the dynasty of the Oracles is above catering to the needs of lowly readers by recounting the events himself, so the task will now pass in the hands of a narrator. 

Can the narrator be omniscient?

* * *

The Seventh in the dynasty of the Oracles would never allow a mere mortal to hold such power. 

Fair enough. Can the narrator be the Narrator, at least?

The Seventh in the dynasty of the Oracles will be magnanimous and allow that. 

Fuck yeah. 

* * *

Sat on his throne—which resembles more a large, uncomfortable bed—in the middle of the otherwise empty hall, The Seventh watches curiously as the sentinels who usually guard the perimeter of the castle march in. Over the broad shoulders of Zu’aфhélerш[1], a long-limbed woman swings at each one of the man’s steps, and from His perspective, The Seventh can mostly only see the round shape of her ass. Although he feels bad for noticing that, the flesh remains weak no matter how many millennia it can live, so he lets his Everlasting Gaze linger for a few seconds more. 

Then, the woman gets dumped on the floor by Zu’aфhélerш, and the gazing and lingering is short-lived. 

In the silence of the hall, the woman’s yelp and groan of pain echo awkwardly, and The Seventh has to resist the urge to go help her up (because, as the Narrator would like to note, The Seventh is good and just and He can often be quite the sweetheart, sometimes). 

The long strip of cascading silk that circled His head, tied just below His eyes, conceals His grimace of sympathy, but He still remains silent as the woman—the girl, really; she can’t have lived longer than a couple of decades if she’s human like The Seventh suspects—gets up on her own and fixes her unruly mop of hair with more dignity than He expected. 

Standing up, she’s as tall as the sentinels, but where they are round and muscular, she’s lean and thin, a pale and freckled pink where her strange clothes leave her naked—above her collarbones, from her wrists down to the tip of her long fingers. She poses light on the balls of her bare feet, like she’s ready to bolt but is still thinking of the _when_ and _where to_. 

The Seventh thinks she resembles the snakes that slither in the dunes, looking for prey, then she smiles—sardonic, resigned to her fate in a distantly amused way—and the illusion shatters, because snakes are not that pretty when they bare their teeth. 

The Seventh blushes under the silk.

The blush is Holy and Virtuous, of course. 

“My Seventh,” Zu’aфhélerш begins, laying one hand on the woman’s shoulder to push her forward. She goes with it easily, stepping closer, but The Seventh can see her hands begin to shake, and her eyes dart around the room like she desperately wants to find another exit. There are no other exits apart from the huge open doors behind her, and four armed men in the way if she tries anything—she seems to gather this just from that one quick look around the room, and her eyes fall on The Seventh again. She holds eye contact with evident fear and resolute stubbornness. 

The Seventh is intrigued. He shifts awkwardly on His throne, feeling curious and outraged and a whole mix of other complicated emotions—the Narrator kindly asks to erase that part from the history books, because Oracles have a reputation to maintain and this is all so very...unseemly. 

“We found this traveller marching towards the castle,” Zu’aфhélerш continues, his voice clear and relaxed. The woman stealthily brings one hand to her ears, and fiddles with whatever is hiding under her short brown curls as the sentinel talks. “We watched her get closer and closer, and feared she had ill intentions towards the Oracle. We captured her before she had the chance—her fate is in your hands, The Seventh.”

The woman, who’d basically been slapping her hands over her ears, by now, stops and smiles victoriously. The Seventh is so distracted by the weird ritual that He almost doesn’t hear Kзlc’cosfчeer[2], one of the other sentinels, speak up. 

“How would you like us to execute her, My Seventh?”

The woman’s eyes go round in shock, and the smile falls off her face. “ _Execute me?”_ she says, in what The Seventh deciphers quickly enough as a heavily accented earthly language. German? French? No, English. 

“Wait, did you say _excuse_ me?” She taps on her ears again. “Excuse or execute? Big difference there. I’m voting for _excuse_ , personally.” She looks at The Seventh again, and the fear is now clearer than ever—so much bravado, for someone who can’t or doesn’t care to hide the terrified tremor of her voice or the tears welling up in her eyes. 

Kзlc’cosfчee straightens to his fullest height, and he draws his sword in one practiced movement. “How dare you address the Oracle directly? You’re less than filth under His godly toes!”[3]

“...I’m just a tourist?” the woman says, lips curling up in a grimace of a smile. 

“What _barbaric_ language are you speaking, filth-under-His-toes?”

Alright, this is getting out of hand. The Seventh is starting to resent the notion that He doesn’t wash His feet regularly, and also He doesn’t want the stranger with the pretty smile and bouncy curls to get skewered in the middle of the hall. 

He wraps one hand around the sceptre, always floating a few inches off the floor to His right, and He bangs it twice on the ground. “Enough,” He says, with His deepest and most compelling Oracle voice (He’s still mastering that one). “No blood will be spilled. Not today, not ever—Zu’aфhélerш, what made you think this armless human youth would be a threat to the Oracle?”

Zu’aфhélerш looks sheepish. The other sentinels behind him try very hard to blend with the background. “She was approaching at a fast rate?”

“By foot!”

“She, uh. Looked determined?”

“To find shelter, I assume!” He turns to look at the woman. “Traveller, weren’t that your intentions? Or were you planning to attack my castle bare-handed and barefoot?”

The girl opens her mouth but hesitates, snapping it shut after a few seconds. Mh, so she didn’t actually speak their language—she must have a device in her ears helping her with translating only. 

“Go ahead, talk. I can understand your primitive, graceless tongue, even if my sentinels don’t.”

She blinks twice and then snorts, which isn’t elegant, but still quite cute. She pulls it off, somehow. “Rude, but okay. I, uh, I have no ill intentions. I got the coordinates to this Dimension from an old Atlas, and the place seemed interesting...I swear, I just wanted to visit.”

“Our reign is not open to common travellers to visit, Earthling. It’s been prohibited for a long time—this place is a sanctuary, an haven for old gods and a few chosen, special scholars.” The Seventh sighs, tapping his fingers on the sceptre. He doesn’t enjoy the formalities, but the Oracle must follow a certain line of conduct. “You are, simply, not worthy. My sentinels have been too...zealous, perhaps, but they’re right in that you being here requires a punishment.”

The woman had gotten progressively paler as she listened to the Oracle’s words. He watches her swallow her fear down, and tilt her head chin back—not in challenge, He thinks, but to steel herself. “Well, shit,” she says. “I didn’t know any of that.”

“I figured.”

Ru’lhjuюf’sa[4] speaks for the first time, his voice softer than his companions. “My Seventh, we can’t let this traveller leave unpunished. We have—”

“Yes, yes,” The Seventh interrupts, feeling a headache begin to creep behind His eyes, “we have a _reputation_. There are _rules_.”

 _Who would even notice_ , he thinks bitterly, _if I let her go with nothing more than a slap on the wrist?_ The palace is well on its way of being empty—The Seventh supposes that’s the fate of people who want to live as untouchable relics.

The woman surprises him by speaking. “So? What will it be?” she asks, cocky despite the fact that she’d been threatened with death by sword mere minutes ago. 

“Oh. Uhm.” _What_ will it be? “Right, yes. Uh…”

“My Seventh, no spilled doesn’t include heavy bruising,” Zu’aфhélerш suggests.

The girl visibly gulps. “How about a very stern lecture instead?”

Kзlc’cosfчeer raises a finger. “A light whipping?”

“I’d settle for violent verbal abuse, really.”

“Choking?” Ru’lhjuюf’sa suggests.

“Just—well, actually I could be open to that, depending on the context.”

This conversation really is exacerbating the headache. 

“ _E_ _nough_ ,” The Seventh snaps, trying to drop His tone a few octaves, aiming for authoritative when in reality He wishes He could curl up in a ball and sleep for the foreseeable future. “No violence.”

“But, My Seventh—”

“Yes, quite right,” the interrupts, well on His way to aggravated. “ _Your_ Seventh. It is up to me to decide the Earthling’s fate, and I decide that—” _think think think what would get them to shut up?_ “—she will be my concubine.”

Well. The Oracle can’t say that’s where He thought that sentence was going when he started it. 

Perhaps the gods were guiding him to the right path. Perhaps the woman’s courage and naked, elegant neck inspired him. 

In the end the declaration has the desired effect: silence falls on the room. 

Except for Ru’lhjuюf’sa, that mutters under his breath “That’s hardly punishment…”, but The Seventh, in His infinite glory and need for this conversation to be over, pretends not to hear it. 

* * *

The woman gets escorted by the sentinels to The Seventh’s quarters, bravely fighting back the whole way, and the hours between that and when The Seventh can actually retire to his room are long and boring and _excruciating_. 

He’ll admit it: He’s curious. The woman intrigues him, with her simple utilitarian clothes and the cutting smile and the vulnerability plain in her eyes even as she stared him down. The Seventh had met one, maybe two Earthlings in his life—brief encounters in interdimensional markets before He became the Oracle—so He has no idea what to think. Are they all so brazen as to travel to a forbidden location just for fun, to see what it’s like? Would they all reply with a slightly inconvenienced _well, shit_ when faced with the consequences?

He wants to know more. There’s so much He studied, but so little He has experienced…

(The Narrator is also looking forward to their next meeting, by the way. They’re hoping they’ll have the occasion to write erotica for the first time.)

No matter how slowly time seems to pass, eventually enough of it goes by that The Seventh can go back to his quarters without raising suspicions. Although, judging by Ru’lhjuюf’sa and Zu’aфhélerш’s attempt to hide their smirks (they insisted guarding the hall for the rest of His vigil, just to be safe) they already suspect He’s eager to join his new...concubine. 

As a fun mental exercise during those long empty hours, The Seventh tries to come up with different punishments He could have thought of earlier, and He comes up with roughly fifty that would have made His sentinels happy and exactly zero He would deemed acceptable. Making the woman His concubine remains top three in terms of ridiculousness, however, so there’s that. 

Either way, when He feels like He can, The Seventh unfurls from His throne of soft linen and silk, and hightails it out of the room, long flowy tunic swishing behind Him. When He gets to His room He’s out of breath, and He has to whisper I _’m the Oracle, let me in, quick_ to the enchanted doors before they recognize His normal voice behind the slight panting. 

He enters the room, closes the doors behind him, and then He’s on the floor with dark curls over his face and a knife on His throat. 

“Ah!” the woman exclaims, fire in her eyes, “those fuckers took my backpack, but they didn’t think to check my _pockets_. Incompetents. You should fire them. Now beg for your life!”

“What’s your name?” The Seventh asks instead, and this time He’s out of breath for reasons that have nothing to do with rushing through hallway after hallway. 

“Uh? Maxine. What’s yours?”

“I—you should call me The Seventh.”

“That’s a mouthful, but whatever. Good talk— _now beg for your life!_ ”

“Maxine, this is not necessary. I know I scared you earlier, but I have no intentions in actually keeping you as a concubine.”

The woman arches a brow, skeptical, but she rolls off The Seventh all the same. “I’m...I’m weirdly offended by that, but gifted horses, yadda yadda,” she says. “What’s gonna happen to me, then?”

The Seventh clears His throat and sits up, fixing the headpiece on His head that risks falling off. “You’re free to return whence you came from, for what concerns me. My sentinels will be angry, but they’ll get over it, and then life will...continue on its normal course.”

Maxine springs back to her feet, and offers Him a hand. “You don’t sound so thrilled about that.”

“The Oracle doesn’t have to be thrilled about anything,” He mutters, hesitating before accepting the help—the sentinels, or any of the other servants in the palace for what matters, never dare touch Him. The firm grip of the Earthling’s hand is a novel feeling. “That’s frowned upon.”

“Who’s doing the frowning?”

“Never mind that,” The Seventh says, and in an attempt to change topics He asks: “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

Maxine shrugs. “Sure, I could go for some food. And water, if you even have that in this desert.”

“Nothing grows here, we summon what we need from near Dimensions.” The Seventh walks to the corner table on the other side of the room, a large triangular shape of light-colored wood where He keeps His books. The room used to be more empty, back when The Sixth still used it—the few pieces of furniture The Seventh requested, right after He became Oracle, came with the disapproving frowns of the craftsmen who installed them. 

He picks up the carved-out horn that lays on the table, smooth in some places by years of being used. “My usual meal, please. Larger portions,” he says into the opening, knowing His voice will come out from the exact copy that the cooks keep in the palace’s kitchen. 

Maxine’s gaze on Him is so intense He can feel it even with his back turned. “You’re a long way from home, aren’t you, Earthling?”

“Not the furthest I’ve gone—certainly the last time I rely on an Atlas from the last century to get the coordinates, though,” she says with a chuckle. “Hey, did you just order takeout?”

“If anything, I ordered take-in. And we used to be more accepting, once, I’m not surprised this Dimension still appears in some old books for travellers. The coordinates you got, they did bring you to a landing spot. Since travel here has been prohibited, we’ve simply let it get buried under the sand.”

“Oh, that explains it. I thought my _EasyTravel!_ had fucked me over.”

The Seventh tilts His Magnificent But Confused Head. “Excuse me?” 

“This thing?” Maxine says, and lifts her shirt to tap on a small rectangle installed in her hip, seemingly made of opaque metal. She drops the fabric before He can investigate further, or get distracted by the smooth skin of Maxine’s stomach. “What, never seen it before?”

“No, I—,” He clears His throat, smooths His hands over His already perfectly ironed tunic. “Oracles can’t leave Their spot from the castle. They’re what keeps the mysticism of this Dimension alive. Leave for even a second, and—”

“Nobody’s left to stoke the fire?” Maxine finishes, and then whistles softly. “Damn, from where I come from this is usually a job for women.”

The words are like freezing water being dumped over His head. “What? No, of course—what?,” The Seventh stutters, and realizes with growing terror that He’s losing control of his breathing pattern. “What are you insinuating? And how _dare_ you insinuate it?”

“Wo, buddy, I’m not insinuating anything!” Maxine gently pushes Him to sit on the edge of the bed. “It was a joke? You know, Roman mythology, the Vestals? Keep the fire...nevermind. Are you okay?”

_No. It feels like my heart is about to give out._

“Of course. The Oracle is always...okay.”

Maxine huffs a laugh, but it comes off as nothing more than gentle teasing. “Yeah, yeah, I’m starting to get how things work around here,” she says, and brushes between The Seventh’s eyebrows, smoothing the worried line there. “You’re sweating cold, though, looks to me like _My Seventh_ isn’t doing so hot.”

“Don’t call me that, you can’t call me that,” He gasps. His lungs refuse to cooperate—it was just a joke, why can’t He calm down? Even the Narrator is getting worried. “I’m _not_ yours, I’m my people’s Seventh. Their Seventh Oracle, here to reign over them—for centuries...oh Gods. Centuries.”

“Buddy, breathe, come on.”

“It’s only been five years,” He continues with a gasp. The rest of His life stretches in front of him all of a sudden, like it does sometimes in His most troubling nightmares. “How am I supposed to last centuries? Like this?”

“What happens after, uh, those centuries?”

The Seventh laughs, and it comes out as an hysterical wheezing more than laughter. “What happens? I die. I’ll watch over an empty castle for my entire life, then I’ll _die_. What are you doing—!”

Maxine finishes tugging the silk that covers His face down to His neck, and the shock of being exposed leaves The Seventh speechless for a moment. “You can’t breathe with this thing over your face,” she says softly. She doesn’t look that worried that He’s going to keel over and die, which is comforting because to Him it feels like the most likely outcome right now. “I’m leaving here soon, anyway, let me help you through this panic attack, as a thank you for not decapitating me or whatever.” Maxine starts breathing deep and slow, and THe Seventh tries to mimic her pace. 

“There you go, in and out, that’s good. Not so different from me, uh, are you?” She smiles, but the more she stares at His face the more it morphs into a confused expression. “Actually. Not so different from me at all. Hey, are you…?”

The Seventh abruptly stands up from the bed, almost sending Maxine to sprawl on the floor. “No. Yes. I—gods, I’m so tired of this”, he whispers. 

He’s been hiding this for years, why is He even considering confessing now? But then again, what’s the point? Who can this stranger tell when The Seventh is the only one who speaks her language in this entire Dimension. 

The idea of coming clean takes shape in His head, and for some reason it calms Him down almost completely from what the Earthling called a panic attack. So. Yeah. _Why not?_

 _Who’s doing the frowning?_ Maxine asked earlier, and that’s a very good question. Who’s left here to impress...four sentinels, a few servants. The Narrator. 

_I don’t need any Narrator,_ The Seventh thinks. 

Wait, uh? For real?

_Yeah. It’s high time I start taking care of my own life’s story._

If you say so, My Seventh. 

“Maxine, can you keep a secret?” The Seventh asks, and Maxine looks like she’s just patiently waiting for the obvious to be stated. The amused smile on her lips only grows wider when The Seventh takes a last shaking breath before speaking. “I’m not the Oracle. I’m his sister.” Belatedly, she adds, “Tell anyone and I’ll have you slaughtered.”

Maxine raises to her feet and shakes her curls off her forehead. “Sure you will. So what’s your _real_ name, sister-of-the-Oracle?

The name hasn’t left her lips in so long she’s surprised she even remembers it. “Ardesia.” 

“That’s a pretty-ass name, Ardesia,” Maxine comments, and laughs when Ardesia collapses back on the bed, shaking hands hidden in the sleeves of her tunic. The ground could crumble beneath her feet and reveal a pit of scorpions, and it still wouldn’t be as upsetting as telling a stranger her real name. 

A minute passes. Maxine sits down next to her on the bed. “Hey, that was supposed to be a very dramatic revelation, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

“Oh,” Maxine says, very obviously fighting back another smile. “I don’t really give a shit, to be honest.”

Ardesia lets herself fall back on the bed with a tired groan. 

* * *

Later, as Maxine devours a plate of roasted chicken-adjacent-bird sat on the floor, Ardesia explains to her why she had a panic attack over the insinuation that she _might_ be a woman.

The role of Oracle has been assigned to women, in the past, so that’s not why she’s been hiding her real identity for the past five years. When Maxine comments _oh cool, so it’s not a misogyny thing_ , Ardesia is perplexed until she puzzles together the meaning of the word—and damn, doesn’t Maxine envy how foreign the concept seems to be to her. 

“My brother, Solidago, was the chosen one,” Ardesia says from her spot on the large, low bed that occupies most of the room. Without the veil covering half of her face, it’s easy to see the permanent melancholy etched on her features—her lips are full, always slightly parted in a small pout that lets stark white teeth peek through, the permanent frown of her eyebrows has lost the edge of animosity it had before. _She looks like a sad kid_ , Maxine thinks, and knowing that she’s lived decades before Maxine was even born, and will live centuries more after her death does nothing to shatter the illusion. 

“When he found out he was devastated. He’d really hoped one of our cousins would be the next Oracle, when The Sixth passed away, but fate wasn’t that kind to him. So I told him I would take his place—he would have wasted away in here, we both knew it.” 

Maxine drops the last bone on her now empty plate, and wipes her mouth. The conversation is starting to get serious, and she’d rather not have undisclosed-bird-species grease on her hands and face for it. 

She watches Ardesia watch her hands, posed on her lap. “And you wouldn’t?” she asks softly.

Ardesia raises her eyes, bright orange irises, the color so intense they look unreal. “I don’t regret it,” she replies, and Maxine suddenly remembers she’s talking to royalty so ancient and powerful it borders on divinity. It makes a shiver travel down her spine. 

“I believe you,” Maxine says, ‘cause it’s true. “I don’t have siblings, but I’ve heard that some people would, like, die for them or whatever.”

Ardesia sighs, dropping the eye contact to look at the wall with a thousand-yard stare. “It can be inconvenient.”

Maxine snorts, and raises from the floor. Her knees crack pleasantly when she stands up—she’s spent hours cross-legged on the floor, listening to Ardesia explain the importance of the sanctuary that is this Dimension, and the complicated magic that keeps it in stasis through time. _The two moons have been watching over the desert for millennia, and they will for millennia more_ , she said. It made Maxine miss her Sun terribly, despite that one day when she was twelve when she fell asleep at the beach and woke up with the back as red as a lobster. 

She’ll take a week of wincing when she sits down over an endless night, thank you very much. 

“But yes,” Ardesia continues, “When he escaped, he pretended to be me, and I took his place. I did it to protect him; to let him live a full life out there.” She waves a hand at the large windows on the side of her room, facing over the same empty desert Maxine landed in. “The life he wanted. Travelling between Dimensions—like you do, I suppose.”

Maxine nods very seriously. “Just straight chilling.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Ardesia says, and for some reason she whispers it like it’s a terrible secret, and that makes Maxine laugh until Ardesia looks a mix between alarmed and pleased. 

* * *

The excitement of the day, plus the food, plus the crush from the _oh God these dudes are gonna kill me_ adrenaline high from earlier get the best of Maxine eventually. 

“I still don’t know where _you_ come from,” Ardesia says after Maxine has told her of some of her travels. “I’ve studied Earth, but it’s much bigger than my Dimension.”

Maxine blinks twice, and forces her brain to focus on her conversation. “Oh, right. Australia. Ever heard of it?”

“ _Australia,_ " Ardesia echoes, falling again into that awed whisper that Maxine finds, for reasons that are possibly related to the fact that Ardesia looks really fucking hot, endearing. In the hall, when she was trying to convince the sentinels that murder wasn’t the option, her voice had been deep and loud. Maxine doesn’t think that she’s doing it consciously, by the way she speaks now seems to be compensating for that—softer, despite the low timbre. “I’ve heard it’s a land of terrible creatures.”

Maxine snorts. “You’ve heard right. A kangaroo punched me in the face once.”

“ _Really?_ ”

“No, and I wouldn’t have any teeth left to tell the story. It would have been cool though.” 

Ardesia squints at her. The squint gets squintier when Maxine yawns right to her face without the courtesy of covering her mouth. “I don’t enjoy being played.”

“And I,” Maxine replies, “don’t enjoy being someone’s concubine, but here we are.”

Ardesia smooths her hands over the rich-red tunic still covering her legs, and shifts on the large bed. “Sorry about that. I couldn’t think of anything less...harmful.”

“Nah, don’t worry,” she says, waving a hand as if to physically dismiss the apology. “I put a knife to your neck, I guess we’re even.” She yawns again, and this time her jaw clicks painfully, fucking _ouch_.

“You’re very tired,” Ardesia comments, “feel free to sleep. I can help you escape when we wake up.”

Maxine looks around the room. There’s only one bed—a gigantic one, sure, but only one. “There?” she asks, pointing to where Ardesia herself is sitting. She smirks when the other woman’s eyes go very wide, and she looks down af if it comes as a surprise that she basically invited Maxine to sleep with her. 

_I mean_ , Maxine thinks, _technically I_ am _her concubine._

God, she’s _so_ down. 

“Here,” Ardesia answers, forcibly nonchalant[5]. It doesn’t show over the dark complexion of her skin, but spiritually speaking she’s quite clearly blushing very hard. 

Jesus fucking Christ. Is it morally reprehensible if Maxine is digging this whole ancient-virgin vibe?

She doesn’t tease Ardesia further, though, knowing that she’s prone to passing the line sometimes. From what Maxine understands the Oracle is some sort of eternal, untouchable figure similar to the Vestals she made a joke about earlier. 

It’d be like flirting with a nun. 

Sounds kinda fun, actually. 

Either way, Maxine keeps her mouth shut—apart from yawning in increasing frequency—as she undresses, sat on the edge of the bed with her back to Ardesia. Jeans and long-sleeved shirt go, too uncomfortable to sleep in, and she finds herself in a combo of boyshorts and dark tank top that’s pretty modest, overall. 

A few grains of blue sand fall on the silk sheets when she energetically shakes out her curls. She busies herself with brushing them off the bed, pointedly ignoring the sounds of Ardesia taking off her complicated attire. 

She has to turn, at some point. She might not wait for as long as she could have, either, but it seems ridiculous when they’re about to sleep next to each other anyway. 

Ardesia looks even smaller without the long tunic all bunched up around her body, now folded neatly in her arms. Maxine watches from the corner of her eye as Ardesia walks behind the bed—which is smack in the middle of the room, not touching any walls, and that’s how Maxine knows this is a land of insane people—and rests it over a low table she hadn't noticed before. 

“I can feel you watching,” Ardesia says. She doesn’t sound embarrassed anymore—if anything, she’s amused. 

Maxine hums. “You looked taller, earlier.”

“That’s because I was floating.” She turns around and catches Maxine’s eyes, shows her blinding white teeth a self-satisfied smile—she goes to take off her headpiece as well, and Maxine’s so surprised by the rows of pale orange braids she was hiding under there that she barely hears the rest of Ardesia’s explanation. “My brother is much taller than me, and the Oracle’s clothes are all long enough to trail on the floor, so it’s not hard to hide the trick.”

“Wow, so you’re literally the magic girl of my dreams.”

Ardesia tilts her head. “Your what?”

Jesus, Maxine needs to get a grip. There are strips of gold at the end of Ardesia’s braids, falling like curtains over the sides of her round face. “Nevermind,” she mutters. “Are you comfy in those or do you have some special Oracle-approved pajamas to put on on?”

Ardesia glances down at the loose long pants and square tube top she’s still wearing, of a soft and utilitarian beige color. “I usually sleep naked,” she comments after a second, “but these will do.”

Okay, so maybe not _exactly_ like flirting with a nun. 

* * *

Ardesia doesn’t know what she was so worried about. Her bed feels more like an island of silk and soft cotton than a real bed on most days, and having another person in there for the first time doesn’t make it suddenly claustrophobic. 

They go to sleep on opposite sites, and even when half an hour later (Ardesia is still staring at the abstract swirls painted on the ceiling, _extremely_ awake) Maxine sprawls her limbs in every direction, they’re still not touching.

She remains aware of her presence to a painful level, though. The image of her naked thighs, lean but strong—like she runs a lot, probably not out of choice if Ardesia had to guess—plays in loop on her mind. 

Oracles always have especially vivid dreams, and when she finally relaxes enough to fall asleep Maxine’s thighs stick around for those as well.

* * *

Ardesia wakes up cuddled up on Maxine’s chest, because _of course she doe_ s. This was bound to get embarrassing, she could feel it in her bones.

Maxine is already looking at her when she finds the courage to look up. “Kinda clingy, My Seventh,” she says, voice rough from sleep but openly delighted. Ardesia is one second away from pushing back like she’s been burned, when Maxine curls up even closer and brushes back the braids that fell on Ardesia’s forehead. “Shouldn’t you wear a scarf or something? When you sleep, I mean.”

Are their legs touching? Their legs are touching. “The Oracle doesn’t need any of that,” she says, and it comes out all breathy, talk about _unseemly_. “The Oracle’s hair is perfect always and forever.”

Maxine blinks at her and then she laughs, face pushed in one of the many pillows tossed on the bed. Ardesia still doesn’t get why some perfectly normal things she says get this reaction out of the woman, but she likes hearing—and watching—her laugh anyway. “Bitch!” Maxine says, muffled by the pillow, “gimme some of that magic, I have to use like eight different products!”

Ardesia nods, eyeing the mess of curls on her head that got even messier in her sleep. “You remind me of something I saw years and years ago, back when I was free to leave this Dimension.”

“Yeah? What do I remind you of?”

“I was in a museum of ancient history in the Land of Tah,” she says, “and I saw a woman cleaning the floor. She was using a mop—”

“Wow, alright, fuck you—”

“And the mop of brown and quite disgusting at the bottom—”

“I get it, I get it!” Maxine grabs the closest pillow she could reach and smashes it on Ardesia’s face, who saw it coming but lets it happen anyway. “So you have a sense of humour, color me fucking surprised. And you use it to bully your poor concubine? I bet that’s not very Oracle-like.”

Ardesia pushes the pillow away, and finds Maxine leaning over her with the hair that looks, truth to be told, soft and lovely, falling over both their faces like clusters of ripe grapes. She has the glint of laughter still bright in her eyes, and her chest heaves with every breath, and Ardesia crosses her legs under the covers and squeezes her thighs shut for one long second. “You might be a bad influence on me, Earthling.”

“You’re so welcome,” Maxine says, and she lowers her face over Ardesia some more, a little more—

Someone knocks on the door. “My Seventh,” comes a voice from outside, just as Maxine rolls back to her side of her bed with an annoyed huff. “Your vigil as Oracle starts—”

“ _I know_ ,” she calls loudly. One traveller keeping her company for a night and she manages to forget her rigid routine. “I’m well aware, _thank you._ I’ll be there.” Her voice loses intensity, gets quieter and more her own. “As always. I’ll be there.”

She might miss the answer from whichever servant was sent to wake her today, or maybe there’s no answer—either way, Ardesia hears the footsteps getting further and further from her door only when they’ve mostly faded away. 

“Hey,” Maxine says, “you okay?”

Ardesia turns to look at her, and steals her jaw. “I’m getting you out of here. Right now.”

* * *

“So, uh, what’s the plan?” 

Ardesia might be significantly shorter than her, but whatever spell makes her float a foot off the air seems to make her faster as well, and Maxine is thankful that she can take long strides to keep up. 

After the wake up call from earlier (the voice sounded different from any of the sentinels she’s met; Maxine kind of thought they were the only guys hanging out in the castle) Ardesia’s good humour seemed to vanish into thin air. 

Well, not that she’s in a _bad_ mood now, not exactly. She’s back in the Oracle outfit from yesterday, so most of her face is covered, but there’s no mistaking the determined look in those fiery orange eyes. Maxine got so swept away by her fast-paced preparations earlier that she didn’t think to ask how she was going to get out of here; she just slipped on her jeans and shirt and played the Mission Impossible theme in her head in lieu of any actual soundtrack for their escape. 

“The plan is to simply walk out,” Ardesia responds. She doesn’t even glance at Maxine—she’s staring straight ahead with an intensity that makes her worry lasers are going to start shooting out of her eyes...which would be pretty hot, now that she thinks about it. 

Damn, and they even almost kissed. Was that her last, missed chance?

“Cool, got that, and then?” she asks. “My _EasyTravel!_ is broken, your guard dogs poked at it a little to hard with a fucking dagger.”

She raises her shirts enough to point at the device on her hip, the small screen still cracked beyond repair. Ardesia looks at it for a half a second and keeps walking. “Oh, that? I don’t need that to get you out of this dimension. I know a simple ritual to do it, no technology required.”

 _Holy shit, no way,_ Maxine thinks.

“Holy shit, no way,” Maxine says. “What, like the blood ritual from the old days? Slash your hand open, chant the coordinates and hope for the best kind of ritual?”

She knows that the _EasyTravel!_ is a simplified version of that ritual, but the small device only needs a drop of blood to work—nothing more than a pin prick—and without it neither Maxine nor the vast majority of common travellers have the sheer power required to shift through Dimensions. 

They turn to their left at the end of the corridor, just to enter what looks to Maxine like an exact copy of the last one. The last five, actually. 

“I might not have been _chosen_ as this generation’s Oracle, but I studied what my brother would have studied, practiced the rituals and spells he would have practiced,” Ardesia explains. “If anything, I’ve always been more naturally inclined to this role than him. So yes, _that_ ritual, Maxine, and quite easily, too.”

“Stop flexing on me,” Maxine mutters, rolling her eyes. 

“This is not a matter of muscle definiti—”

“My Seventh?”

 _Oh oh, busted._ One of the sentinels has appeared at the end of the hallway, thankfully behind them. 

“Ugh, _Tim_ [6],” Ardesia says, or at least Maxine thinks she does, and then she starts walking even faster, ignoring her guard. 

The sound of those pretty golden sandals—which Maxine _still_ wants to steal and wear for the rest of her days—start echoing down the marble floors, but neither Maxine nor Ardesia stop or turn to look. “My Seventh! Where are you going?”

“I am, uh, running an errand!” Ardesia says, in the deep booming voice Maxine remembers from yesterday. “I’ll be quick!”

“My Seventh, we’re all at your service!” Tim’s voice sounds nearer. Maxine’s heart jumps in her throat—what happens if they’re caught? Is Maxine risking her life again? Is Ardesia, if someone finds out she’s not her brother? “Why is the foreigner with you?”

“Well, where is she supposed to be?”

“She’s supposed to be dead, really. My Seventh! Please stop!”

“Ardesia,” Maxine whispers, “I think we literally need to run this errand.”

“You might be right.”

“My Seventh! Is the filthy, disgusting traveller forcing you to do this?”

“Dude,” she calls out, outraged, “what the hell!”

There’s the unmistakable sound of a sword being drawn from its sheet. “My Seventh! Was that a threat to your person? I knew she was dangerous!”

Ardesia groans, and steers Maxine to turn quickly at another corner. “Gods, Tim, just _shut up_ ,” she says, and then they’re _really_ booking it. 

Maxine runs as fast as she can, following Ardesia down the maze of the palace. She encourages Ardesia to hold the hem of her tunic up to free her legs, and it truly is a surreal experience to see her float in midair like she’s standing on a very clean glass floor. 

They finally reach a hallway that looks different from the others—this one has large windows that face the deserts, still bathed in moonlight. Maxine’s expecting to see some sort of back door somewhere, but there are none. She gets the hint when Ardesia heads straight for one of the windows, still holding the red tunic out of the way. 

“Here, here, quick,” she pants, and after unlocking the window, she flings herself out and into the sand. Maxine follows suit, and it’s when her feet sink into the sand that she realizes they have no chance of making it any further before the sentinels—and the rest of the castle’s inhabitants—find them and bring them back inside. 

She grabs Ardesia by a wrist, trying to stop her from running away, and the whiplash makes her headset fall off. The pale orange braids come spilling out, but neither of them make a move to fix that. “Ardesia, I’m too slow like this, I can’t run!” she says, “Do it here! The fucking ritual, whatever!”

Ardesia shakes her head. “We can’t, that magic doesn’t work too close to the castle. We have to go to the old landing spot.”

“Well, then I’m fucked! We’re fucked, whatever—actually, are you even in danger?”

Ardesia looks terribly lost for a moment. “I—I don’t know. Maybe? They’ll figure out I’m not my brother, that’s for sure.”

 _Yeah_ , Maxine thinks, _there’s no mistaking her for a 6 foot tall man anymore_.

“Why are you risking so much for me?” she asks. It really makes no fucking sense for Ardesia to destroy her life for a stranger—especially Maxine. Certainly nobody has been willing before. 

No answer comes. “Wait here,” Ardesia says instead, and then she’s running away, now floating only a few inches off the fine sand. 

Maxine watches her fade into the distance, watches her disappear into the pinkish fog that hangs low over the castle. And then she’s alone, in complete silence. 

Maybe she won’t come back. Maybe Maxine asked _why are you doing this?_ and Ardesia didn’t find a satisfactory answer anywhere, and she’s hoping the sentinels catch her and do whatever they wanted to do to her yesterday. 

That would mean she thinks Maxine _did_ believe her, and she _is_ waiting for her to come back. 

“I’m a fucking idiot,” she groans to herself, because she does fully intend to stay put and wait. 

One minute. 

She turns to look anxiously at the open window they jumped out of, and notices her head would still be visible for anyone inside. 

Two minutes. 

She hears sounds getting closer and closer, and she stands petrified for one second too long. When she finally ducks to hide from sight, the sentinels at the end of the corridor have already spotted her. 

Two minutes and thirty seconds. Or whatever, she lost count. 

“She’s there, she’s hiding outside! _What have you done to the Oracle?_ ”

A few seconds more. 

She’s completely, utterly _fucked_. It’s too late to run anywhere, and the sentinels are fast approaching, and Maxine stumbles back from the window just as one of them reaches it. 

“ _I’m just a tourist!_ ” she screeches (who knows, maybe this time it’ll work) and narrowly avoids a flying dagger thrown at her head.

All four sentinels land in the sand in quick succession, shiny swords in their hands, and Maxine curses her life, the stupid useless _TravelEasy!_ on her hip, and the day she decided having _this_ as a hobby was a good idea. 

“The Seventh was too kind, foreigner, we should have followed protocol”, the sentinel that carried her yesterday says. “Death to the intruders!”

“Death to the intruders!” the other three echo, like a bunch of freaks who don’t deserve to wear such nice sandals. 

And as Maxine is thinking of a witty one-liner to make sure her last words are like, super cool and edgy, someone circles an arm around her waist, and she’s being lifted off the ground. 

Onto a horse. 

Maxine yells directly into Ardesia’s ear, and then it turns into a delighted laugh when she realizes what just happened. She hangs onto Ardesia for dear life as the white horse—identical to the ones the sentinels were riding yesterday—runs and runs and runs into the endless desert.

“Oh, My Seventh, you literally swept me off my feet!” she says, raising her voice to be heard over the rush of air around them. 

Ardesia smiles, and Maxine realizes she’s lost the long strip of silk that covered her face somewhere along the way. “I had to use a bit of magic for that,” she replies, “You’re quite heavy.”

Maxine would punch her shoulder in faux offense, but she’s already testing fate by riding a horse sidesaddle, so she hugs Ardesia closer and laughs instead. 

“I thought you’d left me behind,” she confesses softly in her ear, half-hoping the other woman won’t hear her. At the castle, now fading into the distance, she sees the sentinels run in the direction Ardesia disappear in earlier—probably where the stables are, Maxine guesses. 

“Now, why would I do such thing?” Ardesia says. “I just went to steal Tim’s horse,”

“Fuck that guy.”

“Yes, fuck that guy.”

* * *

Ardesia hasn’t visited this place in a long, long time. 

The landing spot, which used to be just a flat circle of marble decorated only by intricate incisions, has disappeared under the sand, but she remembers very clearly the location. She knows her small Dimension like the back of her hand. 

She stops the horse’s wild run when they approach it, and guides him to trot to where the center of the circle used to be. Maxine gets the hint and gracelessly slides off, saving herself from a nasty fall only by virtue of being tall and agile. Ardesia simply floats off the saddle. 

“Show-off,” Maxine accuses her, eyeing her with a raised eyebrow as she straightens her clothes. 

“I don’t know what that means,” Ardesia replies, but she does know, and she struggles to hide a smug smile. “We don’t have much time,” she adds, “they’ll be here soon.”

Maxine saunters closer like they have all the time in the world instead. “Alright, how do we do this?”

“Do you still have the knife you threatened to kill me with?”

“Duh!” She pulls it out of her back pocket and flicks it open, offering the handle to Ardesia. 

She accepts it and gently takes Maxine’s hand as well, holding it in front of her, facing up to the night sky. “It needs to be your blood,” she explains, and quickly cuts her palm open before she can worry about it hurting. 

Maxine hisses, and swears under her breath, but smiles when she catches Ardesia’s eyes. “Kinky,” she says. 

Ardesia feels heat rise to her cheeks. “Silence, Earthling. Use the blood to make a circle in the sand around yourself.”

It looks like the girl wants to say something, going as far as to open and close her mouth a couple of times, but then she snaps it shut and gets to work. Ardesia alternates between watching Maxine turn slowly in a circle, cut hand extended in front of her to steadily drip blood in the sand, and glancing at the dunes her sentinels will appear from if they find them. 

_When_ they find them.

Hopefully Ardesia will be alone in the desert, by then. 

“That’s good enough,” she says to Maxine. “Start chanting the coordinates of the Dimension you want to go to—and be sure to be precise.”

“Ardesia, wait, I—” Maxine swallows, looking as vulnerable as she did yesterday, with death hanging over her head. “Come with me?”

Ardesia’s heart skips a beat, painfully. “Don’t be foolish. I can’t.”

“Sure you fucking can!”

“The coordinates, Maxine,” she snaps, refusing to acknowledge the way her sight is blurring. “You don’t have much time.”

“ _We_ don’t have much time,” Maxine argues, “what do you think they’ll do when they figure out you’ve been lying this entire time?”

Gods, as if she wasn’t plagued by doubts enough, now this _stranger_ comes along thinking she has all the answers. “I don’t know what they’ll do! What I’ve done—what my brother has done—breaks the rules so thoroughly that I have no idea.”

Maxine tugs her closer by the fabric of her tunic, making Ardesia stumble almost inside the circle of blood. Her eyes are wide and dark enough to get lost in, from up close. “What’s one more rule, then?”

“The power in this Dimension will crumble without the Oracle,” she tries, desperate to make Maxine understand, fearing she _will_ see reason. She wants Maxine to ask her to go with her forever; she wants her to stop before her heart cracks in two. “It won’t be a sanctuary anymore.”

“Ardesia, not to be rude,” Maxine says, “but I literally don’t give a single fuck.”

And that’s when behind her shoulders, the sentinels appear as small shapes in the distance, riding on the other white horses Ardesia left in the stables. 

Maxine must see the alarm in her eyes, because she turns her head and tightens her grip on Ardesia’s clothes. 

“The coordinates, Maxine! Start chanting!” she hisses. Maxine hesitates another long second but then follows the order—the numbers roll off her tongue easily, like she has had them memorized for a long time, and Ardesia hopes they will bring her somewhere safe and warm and full of people that love her. 

The sentinels appear bigger now, but they’re still far away enough that Maxien might make it. Ardesia channels every ounce of power she can in the ritual, and the circle of blood soon starts glowing around Maxine’s feet. 

The chanting continues. _Not much longer,_ Ardesia thinks, both about the ritual and her fast approaching guards. A wind picks up, circling around Maxine and whipping her curls back and forth.

“43.31200, 10.51622. Ardesia, please! You hate it here! 43.31200, 10.51622.” Ardesia tries to pry Maxine’s hand from her tunic, but she tightens her hold, and insistently tugging her closer and closer.

“I have duty!” It’s getting weak, her arguing; she doesn’t know how to convince someone who was raised in another world that there’s nothing more important than being the Oracle. But is she so sure herself?

Maxine shakes her head. “Your _brother_ had a duty, and you took his place ‘cause you love him that damn much.” She brings her bloodied hand up to grab Ardesia’s face. She forces her to hold her eyes, and even before she says what she says next, Ardesia knows that it’s over, that she ran out of excuses she hasn’t stopped believing in a long while ago. “He’s somewhere out there. Come with me, and we can find him.”

Behind Maxine the sentinels appear again in Ardesia’s field of vision, this time close, _too_ close. They look murderous, which makes sense if they think Maxine has somehow forced her to do all this with her...foreigner charm. Whatever it is they think she did. 

If the promise of living a freer life at Maxine’s side, if the possibility of seeing her beloved little brother again hadn't been enough to convince, the complete disregard of her free will would do it. 

_How dare they,_ she thinks, _this is the first thing I’ve chosen to do in years._

So she steps in the circle fully, repeats Maxine’s coordinates one last time, and the world fades away before one of her guards can finish swinging his sword at Maxine’s head.

* * *

They land in Maxine’s hometown of Perth, Australia. 

Precisely, on her bed, in her house, in her hometown of Perth, Australia. 

They tumble on the sheets as soon as their feet touch the soft fabric of the duvet. Maxine gets a taste of Ardesia’s elbow, and almost loses a tooth in the process, but overall...not her worst landing. It helps that, elbow aside, Ardesia is very soft and warm on top of her. 

Maxine starts laughing when she puts two and two together. “You bitch,” she says, rolling on the bed until she’s on top, “why did you wait until the last fucking second? I thought you really were not coming!”

“I also thought I wasn’t coming,” Ardesia confesses, her braids spilled on Maxine’s pillow and her usually pouty lips split open into a smile. “Then I realized I miss my brother more than I would miss the palace.”

Maxine tilts her head back and cups Ardesia’s face in both hands, staring down into her bright cat-like eyes. “And?”

“And?” Ardesia repeats, raising one brow. 

“Any other reason?”

“Mh, I’m not sure…”

“Not sure about what?”

Ardesia hums, and fights back another smile until Maxine squeezes her cheeks, and she can’t anymore. “I’ll hold my judgement for now. I still don’t know if you’re a good enough kisser,” she says. 

“Good enough to turn your entire life upside down?”

“Yes,”

“Oh, babe,” Maxine says, leaning down until she can taste Ardesia’s breath on her lips, “I’m even better than that”—and she proves it to her, with so much more than kissing, until Ardesia is thoroughly convinced. 

* * *

This is where the erotica part of the story would fit nicely, but it’s not happening. That’s what you get for firing the Narrator. 

**Author's Note:**

> 1Pronounced Alex.[return to text]  
> 2Pronounced Tim.[return to text]  
> 3This sentence isn’t any less weird in Zu’aфhélerш (pronounced Alex)’s native tongue, by the way. He’s just a weird dude. He might have a fetish.[return to text]  
> 4Pronounced...no, actually, you're on your own on this one.[return to text]  
> 5Un-nonchalantly nonchalant, the Narrator would say. Unfortunately they have been fired, so.[return to text]  
> 6See? The Narrator knew the footnotes would come in handy eventually.[return to text]
> 
> Finally I managed to use my wife, my child, my soulmate, my mother, my queen, my hot action girl Maxine in something. I hope you enjoyed...whatever the fuck that was! Let me know what you thought with a comment if you want (strings of delirious emojis are, by the way, greatly appreciated)!
> 
> Fun fact: the coordinates to Maxine's bedroom are actually the coordinates to the restaurant where I ate the best sandwhich of my life. I almost used the coordinates to my own bedroom and then I realized that I'm a fucking idiot and I shouldn't do that.


End file.
